We live in an age in which âleisureâ is viewed as integral to a good life. Within both the academy and the popular imagination, it continues to be understood and conceptualised in relation to issues of individual freedom and self-expression and in opposition to the constraints of work and labour. Within a society dominated by the political, economic and cultural values of liberalism, leisure has been elevated beyond just the status of a âsocial goodâ. In many ways, it has been popularly conceived as an inalienable rightâa representation of our political, cultural and economic âfreedomâ (Rojek 2010). In an era of a liberalised consumer capitalism, it has become an important marker by which we measure individual identity and collective social âprogressâ.
Nevertheless, given the truly colossal problems and uncertainties currently facing global society, the study of leisure does not immediately jump out as a pressing issue that demands the critical attention of social scientists. Political tensions, widening inequalities at both global and domestic levels, widespread mental health issues and an increasingly immediate environmental crisis are characteristic of our present moment in history. They demand deep thinking and even deeper systemic political, economic and cultural changes if we are to find solutions and avoid the consequences of such challenges. Therefore, a focus on leisure would seem to be a largely superfluous and self-indulgent undertaking: the privilege of academics musing on what they find interesting, irrespective of its immediate social relevance. However, in many respects, contemporary leisure constitutes the cultural embodiment of our dominant political-economic order of neoliberal capitalism which, as many critical scholars have argued, underpins these global crises. As the reader will find in the pages and chapters that follow, it is on the field of leisure, and its processes of production , facilitation, consumption and disposal, that we see the meta-crises of liberal capitalism play out.
As such, our relationship with leisure has never been more complex, and we are living in an era in which leisure has demanded immediate critical engagement like never before. The concentration of conspicuous consumption within the wealthy classes identified by Thorstein Veblen (1965) at the turn of the last century has mutated into a more democratised form of leisure whereby many forms of leisure that would previously have been the preserve of a wealthy elite are now conceived of as rights or expectations. Processes of globalisation and increasingly networked forms of technology and communication have radically changed our relationship to leisure and have re-framed the impacts of leisure on society and the world around us. The environmental impact of the leisure and consumer industries and their political-economic underpinnings is arguably the most profound challenge facing humanity. The interests of our research collective into such issues extend from the burgeoning tourist industries that rack up carbon emissions and transform entire cities, regions and eco-systems (see Large; Smith, this volume) to the production, distribution, consumption and disposal of more mundane commodities like bottled water (Brisman and South 2014). Meanwhile, at the level of the individual, we are witnessing widespread issues of mental health , depression, body dysmorphia and self-harm. The Office for National Statistics recently reported that teenage suicides in England and Wales have risen by 67% since 2010 (Khan 2018), while research by the Childrenâs Society (2018) found that a quarter of 14-year-old girls had self-harmed in the last year. These issues are undeniably multifaceted, but it is not unreasonable to suggest that such figures are connected to the meteoric rise of social media and its transformation of social relationships which intensify competitive individualism against a backdrop of inadequacy and lack (Barber 2007). Furthermore, the crisis of employment that is embedded within processes of globalisation, deindustrialisation and automation are also intimately connected to issues of leisure. Trapped within liberalismâs fetishising of autonomous individualism, it is leisure studies scholars on the ânew leftâ who dreamed of a âleisure societyâ with less work or without work entirely. For these scholars, less work and more leisure naturally equated to more freedom and more happiness. The evidence would suggest that this is far from the case, and it is an argument which the chapters in this book would seriously question, drawing upon more recent critical studies into consumer capitalism and its basis in the cultivation of dissatisfaction (McGowan 2004, 2016).
We could go on, but we would like to avoid our natural inclination for verbosity and leave our contributors with something to say in their respective chapters. Nevertheless, given the above, it is perhaps unsurprising to learn that criminologists as well as social scientists more broadly have shown an interest in the study of leisureâparticularly given the pronounced zemiological turn within criminology in recent years (Hillyard and Tombs 2004; KotzĂ« 2018; Pemberton 2016). It is an interest in harm that unites this varied group of contributors to this volume, alongside their refusal to be constrained to the parameters of what traditionally constitutes criminology. The contributors to this volume come from a range of academic backgrounds such as Sociology, Criminology, Leisure Studies and Health Sciences, which adds variety and diversity to the study of deviant leisure. This book comprises some of the best academics in the field, and we are grateful for the time they have taken to orient themselves towards this project, culminating in a collection of work with the potential to carry its influence beyond the fields of study of both criminology and leisure studies.
The deviant leisure perspective uncovers a complex dynamic of harm, exploitation and vulnerability within a range of leisure practices, underpinned by the global dominance of consumer capitalism (Smith and Raymen 2016; Hayward and Smith 2017). This is not likely to be a popular observation. However, theories of leisure and harm are too important to be left solely to leisure studies scholars, who operate within a field that cannot escape a legacy of theories espousing a gleefully optimistic portrayal of leisure (Parker 1971; Kaplan 1960; Cheek and Burch 1976), while marginalising the role of harm or inequality within leisure practices and broader processes of commodification. For scholars such as Parker (1981), it stood to reason that leisure was a clearly compartmentalised area of life, distinct from all other facets of contemporary existence, while others such as Bell (1974) and Kaplan (1960) cheerfully predicted the dawning of a leisure society premised upon technological advancement and a resultant wealth of free time. The notion of free time is of course central to our understanding of leisure, and it is what places it in such a position of importanceâas an example we need only to think how important the notion of work-life balance has become over recent years, with its connections to health and well-being. Furthermore, the notion of free time is becoming increasingly oxymoronic. As Crary (2013) illustrates, our 24/7 society represents a very real erosion of free time in every conceivable sense. Elsewhere, jobs in a changing economy rely more on emotional labour (Hochschild 1983) and result in a blurring of the distinction between work and leisure. If our leisure time can be punctured by an insistent email from a boss or client, then to what extent can we really stake a claim to free time? As Marcuse outlined in the late 1960s, the potential to which leisure is capable of providing freedom through its myriad choice and promise of individualised, tailored leisure experiences is tempered by the stark reality that engagement within spheres of leisure requires commitment to existing structures of work, and a dedication to competitive consumer markets, constituting a peculiar form of freedom indeed.
The leisure society predicted by leisure studies scholars never came to fruition. Changes in the structures of political economy characterised by the adoption of neoliberal policies created a vacuum into which consumerism proliferated, altering the landscape of leisure irreversibly. Most importantly for the contributors to this book, the collision of leisure with global consumer cultures has had the effect of propagating a range of harms against individuals, societies and the environment. It is these normalised harms that occur within the everyday mundanity of leisure practices rather than contraventions of legal frameworks that are framed as deviant leisure. Understanding these changes and the challenges they create and putting into practice policies and interventions to redi...